So you've eaten an
orange, and the
pips are now just
sitting there, staring at you. (assuming your orange wasn't
seedless.) At this point, if you are a
normal person, you
throw the pips away. If you are me, these are the steps you follow (of course, at each step, you
eat what you remove, because ..
why not?):
-
Remove the brownish yellow husk from the pip. It's sort of slimy and thus slick, so take care not to wing it over the wall of your cubicle and blind a coworker. As much as they would be interested to know of your little foray into science, I am sure they would prefer to keep their eyesight.
-
Now you have what looks like a typical piece of grain, sort of a dull, light brown, almost having a sheen, with one end round and darker, and the other end more pointed, and the same color as the rest of the seed.
-
The round, darker end is covered by a soft membrane; scrape this off to reveal a lovely chestnut color. Note that this step has nothing to do with the disassembly of the seed, I just like the color...
-
The next step is to peel the outer skin from what you have left. (Actually, there are two skins, both extremely thin, the outer one being darker and more opaque than the inner one, but I can't figure out a good way to separate them, so I don't bother.) To do this, pick at the pointy end until it starts to tear. You can then just pull the skin off, usually in one long strip, but sometimes it takes a couple of false starts.
-
So now, in your hand, you hold an off-white, waxy-feeling piece of seed. This is actually from about 3 to about 10 (I don't know what determines the count.. I wonder if the fibonacci series has anything to do with it...) little pieces stuck together. The seams between them are very fine, so you might have to squeeze and pull a little bit to get them to come apart.
All done.